2017’s “It Comes at Night”, written and directed by Trey
Edward Shults.
Starring Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, Kelvin Harrison Jr,
Christopher Abbot, Riley Keough, and Griffin Robert Faulker.
What is it about?
In present day America, a plague of some kind has infected
mankind, decimating the human race. We see a family hiding out somewhere in the
woods, lead by father (an intense Joel Edgerton), with mother (Carmen Ejogo),
son (Kelvin Harrison, Jr), and their dog. They spend their barricaded lives
improving their basic resources, while living in fear of getting infected and
occasional entanglements with both the infected and survivors of the crisis.
Will they be able to survive, while wanting to?
Why is it worth seeing?
“Night” is the second film of Shults’ promising career (the
first being his strong take on a family member’s addiction in 2015’s, “Krisha”).
Sticking with the low budget indie vibe, “Night” isn’t really a traditional
horror film, a fact that may have upset people who saw various trailers suggesting
standard horror film scares. Instead, Shults’ has said that he wrote “Night”
after his father died, and indeed, it’s arguably more of a meditation on grief
and loss than a typical horror film. Substituting scares for creeping dread, we’re
introduced to a world where survival isn’t the only goal for our characters-
it’s wanting to be at peace with an uncertain world where death is always in
the air. At times emotional while refusing to be sentimental, “Night”’s frequent
pitch black darkness keeps the mental claustrophobia maxed out.
Shults uses long and slowly advancing dolly shots, perhaps
to suggest dread encroaching, or to use the house that the family lives in as a
suspenseful character itself. It both protects and imprisons them, while never truly
keeping them safe, cranking up the societal metaphor factor.
As well, Shults’ breaking down of the brutal logistics of
how to organize a survivor camp shows the vulnerable doggedness needed by the
family to stick together no matter what- until that is no longer possible. While
it’s commendable, one does wish that Shults could have left more possibility
for something closer to the possibility of contentment- but maybe it wouldn’t
be considered horror anymore?
With a great score by Brian Mcomber to supersize the dread, and
natural lighting to emphasize the stakes, “It Comes at Night” makes me think of
Kafka’s quote:
“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their
song, namely their silence... Someone might possibly have escaped from their singing;
but from their silence, certainly never.”
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